1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to statistics and survey group creation and sampling. More specifically, it relates to creating a survey group meeting specific requirements and evaluating a candidate's eligibility to participate in a survey group in real time using statistics and probabilities.
2. Description of the Related Art
Creating a group of survey participants can often be a challenge. Many people may be considered for the group but only certain ones who fit a specific profile are selected (referred to as respondents) to be in the survey. The profile of the group of respondents often must meet certain requirements in terms of demographics and socio-economic characteristics. For example, a company may want to measure the effectiveness of one of its ads. To do this it has respondents watch the ad and then evaluates reactions and opinions of the ad. It is important that the respondents be diversified so that the reactions to the ad do not all come predominantly from one or two demographic and socio-economic classes. For example, if only women, ages 18-26 with moderate household income are represented in the survey group, the evaluation would not be very meaningful. It would be more useful if the group was more diversified, had generally the same number of men and women, had respondents with low, moderate and high household incomes, came from different parts of the country, and so on.
However, creating a survey group with the desired diversity may be challenging and often requires significant manual oversight, in other words, human beings watching the process to ensure that the right distribution is forming. It may be difficult to find respondents that meet a certain profile (e.g., males, 40-50, high household income). If a survey is to have at least 500 respondents, it may be necessary to look at 600 or 700 individuals to identify the right respondents with the right demographic and socio-economic profile. Each person evaluated but not accepted into the survey group is referred to as an overage or the group of rejected individuals collectively is referred to as the overage in creating the group. Overages make the process of creating a survey group expensive, inefficient, and time-consuming. It would be desirable to have a system for creating a survey group of a certain profile while reducing overages. That is, a system that is able to determine what types of respondents (i.e., what gender, income level, marital status, etc.) are needed to create the desired survey group while the survey group is being created, that is, in real time. Additionally, there is often a need to create survey groups quickly and tailor them to be as close as possible to a pre-defined distribution. It would be desirable to have a system to tailor or create a survey group as it is being formed.